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by unknowableroom_archivist



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Action, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-30
Updated: 2010-08-30
Packaged: 2019-01-19 21:03:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12418104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unknowableroom_archivist/pseuds/unknowableroom_archivist
Summary: Albus Potter has always questioned his being sorted into Slytherin. And when Scorpius Malfoy warns him of the rather malevolent inner workings of Slytherin House, he questions his namesake, his placement, and even his father.





	1. Broken Mirror

**Author's Note:**

> Note from ChristyCorr, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Unknowable Room](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Unknowable_Room), a Harry Potter archive active from 2005-2016. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project after May 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Unknowable Room collection profile](http://www.archiveofourown.org/collections/unknowableroom).

                                            **Chapter 1**

**Broken Mirror**

     “Damn it, Rose, I don’t know!” Albus Potter was confused, furious, and worst of all, scared.

    “Smart,” said Dad, when Albus told him his greatest fear was of dementors, a thing he had never had the misfortune to cross paths with. 

    But his Dad told him more than Mum would have liked if she had known.  “A fear of fear itself.” 

    “What does that mean?” Albus had asked. 

    Dad glanced at him. “I can’t say I knew what the ruddy he—ck Teddy’s real dad meant when he told me that, when I was your age. I can only say that’s for you to decide.” 

    That was four years ago, when Albus was thirteen. He had been just a boy; now he was seventeen, overage, and wishing his time at Hogwarts was not so limited. It felt like the past six years had been wasted, now that he was starting his concluding year. 

    “I only meant—,” started his cousin, Rose.

     “I know what you meant,” said Albus, after she had asked him quite blatantly if he thought he could do to change his Slytherin status. And through his paranoia, he knew that Rose had the upper hand; she was right, he had no license to release his vicious anger on her. “I’m sorry, I just—I just,” but no matter how hard he tried, there was nothing there for him. He extended an arm which felt feckless, groping in space for words that could never speak through him. He could not abuse those pairings of letters for his own selfish occupations. 

    “I understand,” said Rose. 

    He knew she didn’t, but at the same time, he knew she did. It was comforting even though it was a puzzling kind of thing. Perhaps it was because he didn’t have to destroy his brain trying to figure out a cryptogram; it had already revealed himself. He just didn’t know it yet. She looked just like her mother, Hermione Weasley. But she had her dad’s eyes. Albus’s Uncle Ron had blue eyes like the sky, only more blue. It was a slightly disconcerting shade, sort of like the way the eyes he had inherited from his dad were electric green. Lily Evans’ eyes, his grandmother’s eyes, he was told, though it made no difference to Al as to him, his grandmother was nothing more than a seed that had given birth to more, than disappeared with barely a trace. 

    Albus felt that Rose was blessed to have an even half of both her parents; Hermione’s dreadfully serious air was imperiously overshadowed by the fact that her father, Ron, had given her his oblivious and ostentatious manner. In equal measure was she her parents’ child. Rose had a sense of humor that could give stone bricks stitches from laughing and an overwhelming knowledge that was not bookish; it was obvious but also concealed whenever the need occurred. In short, exactly like Albus's mother, Ginny Potter.

    Her more-blue-than-blue eyes bored into Albus. “Al, what is it? You know you can tell us anything.” 

    “No, Rose, I can’t and you know that! You’re my cousin and I love you for it but please get off my ass, I swear you’re acting like Aunt Hermione. Please, just back off! I can’t think with you doing this.” 

    Lily, who had been quietly watching until that point, said, “Al, Dad told you to tell him if anything like this started happening. You know he wanted to tell us the full story one day. I’m sorry if he didn’t, but please, don’t take that stinking Scorpius Malfoy’s word for it! So what if Dad had something to do with Snape, that doesn’t matter. Listen. Dad even told you when you started Hogwarts that Snape was a great man, right?” Albus, who was just putting up with his younger sister because he loved her, nodded. “So, the Sorting Hat probably made the right decision—” 

    “Lily, are you suggesting that I belong in Slytherin?” he said with all the deadly venom of a snake about to attack.

    Lily’s liquid amber eyes—precisely the same shade as Mum’s—widened with remorse. “Of course not, Al! Just listen to me, please. Snape might’ve made some bad decisions, but he was such a good guy in the end that he made up for it, right? Just please hold on until Dad can tell you the rest. I’m sure it’s not like you think it is.” 

    Albus knew his face went dark. “And yet, when have you known Scorpius Malfoy to be wrong?” 

    At this, Albus’s other cousin, Hugo, who had been watching silently as Lily, burst out laughing. “Well, all the time,” he said. “Not once has he been right, actually. He’s not such a bad guy, but have you ever met his Dad? He supposed to be just a blundering idiot whose Dad was too stuck up to realize he should’ve gone to hell long ago instead of bothering us here.” 

   At that, Albus had to express amusement. The night outside the Gryffindor Common Room, empty except for the four of them, seemed to wink at him. The stars no longer lonely tears but jokers who were beaming at a prank. Sort of like Uncle George. Maybe like what Uncle Fred was supposed to have been like. But no matter of the contentedly spinning echo of the laughter in the room, Albus was somehow unsettled. Scorpius’s words were supposed to comfort him, but how could they? Scorpius was the first in the Malfoy’s now-buried history to have been a Gryffindor. 

    And in a three-sixty, Albus was the first Potter, or Weasley (as he was both, just not by name) to have been sorted into Slytherin. Just like Albus’s Dad was godfather to Teddy Lupin, Harry had had a godfather too. The name Sirius Black had often chased Al around through the nights, like a labyrinthine nightmare he didn’t have the strength to shove off. It was just a name to him. Aside from a couple miscellaneous facts dripping off of it and sticking like tar there was nothing much to go on. 

    Albus felt like he was Sirius in reverse. His dad, mum, grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, everyone, was or had been a Gryffindor. Sirius, well, he was the opposite, the red in a sea of green Slytherins. 

    Albus remembered being terrified of the Sorting Hat on the platform nine and three-quarters. _Slytherin Slytherin Syltherin Slytherin_ , his thoughts had whispered maliciously. _You’re a dirty Slytherin. Go away, you don’t belong with these worthy Gryffindors._

    His dad had repeatedly told him: “I was almost a Slytherin…” 

    But he _hadn’t_ been. _Almost being_ and _nearly being_ were two entirely different matters, and justly, the same thing should have happened for Albus—right?

    “I don’t understand,” he muttered, though not conscious of it. His words cut a deep rut into the once-cheerful atmosphere. 

    “None of us do, Al,” said Rose. “I swear to you I don’t know why it didn’t work out for you.” 

    “Maybe it’s because Slytherin has changed forever, now that Voldemort’s gone,” Lily began optimistically. “Maybe it’s not bad anymore. I fancy it has turned into a kind of Gryffindor-Ravenclaw fusion. Think about it: Ellesmere Thomas, Luna Lovegood and Dean Thomas’s daughter is a Slytherin, and Dad said that Luna was right happy about it. She reckons it’s really changed from how it was when she was a kid. Come on, there’s a Wood in there—as in Oliver Wood. And Katie Bell’s kid, the most brilliant Chaser at Hogwarts until Mum, and she and was one of Mum’s fellow Chasers in the Holyhead Harpies. Seriously, their kid’s a girl. She’s a Slytherin. Just got Sorted yesterday, didn’t you hear it? Face it, Slytherin’s changed.” Lily finished rather smugly, as though Albus's defacing the Potter-and-Weasley name was supposed to be okay because Ellesmere Thomas was in his Slytherin class.

    “Lily, how is a descendent of our Luna, whose dad was supposed to be a lunatic, and a couple Quidditch players’ kid supposed to make me feel better, just because they’re Slytherins? Dad reckons Professor Longbottom was the bravest of the brave or something, and that didn’t put his daughter into Slytherin! It got her into Gryffindor where she belongs and me into Slytherin where the stupid pureblood jerks were supposed to go.” 

    Albus didn’t want anyone to dispute about it. In this way, his mum said that he was just like Dad. Albus thought he wasn’t, really. He was again hit with a pang of jealously after what Rose had: she got to be a perfect blend of her parents. Sure, she and Hugo had the worst-matched parents in the face of the planet, but they were content like that. Nobody gave a damn if Uncle Ron and Aunt Hermione fought, because they always did, it would be too…weird if they didn’t. Albus and Lily, and their older brother James, had parents who were still obviously in love—and liked to show it. His mother was hilarious and his dad was easygoing and valiant. And Albus felt like the misfit. James was supposed to be like Grandpa. Not Grandpa Arthur, whom he had grown up knowing and loving; but the dead Grandpa James. 

    Grandma Molly was always telling stories about how James, Dad, and James the Second, Albus’s brother, were all perfect marauders. James got to keep the Invisibility Cloak until he was out of Hogwarts, when he passed it to Albus; his wrongdoing was a legend at Hogwarts. He was the best Seeker since Dad. He had even found the Room of Requirement before Albus. They were all three alike. Albus’s relics were passed through James, not through Dad: the mirror fragment, the Invisibility Cloak, and the Marauder’s Map, all thought too important for the young Albus until he was seventeen. James had gotten these heirlooms, despite Mum’s wishes, when he was eleven. 

    Al was not like Dad, at least not in the rebellious way. He thought that was how he was supposed to be like Dad. Not the brave side, because James had taken that too. Not in the sweeter, chivalrous, and good kind, which Lily kept. 

    Albus, like Rose, was closest in resemblance to Ginny. But he could not be like Ginny, for Rose had claimed that before he had, so Rose got to keep what was rightfully her acclaimed title. Albus was just Albus. He was not Harry Potter’s son, like James; he was not the leader, like Lily; he was the fiery, courageous, witty Ginny Weasley’s son. 

   But Albus felt that he could not live up to that like Rose could, so he let her take the title. He didn’t think he could win and wrest it out of her, letting Rose Weasley be more like a Weasley-Granger, not just a Weasley. Albus had never really belonged anywhere. After all, he was Albus Severus Potter. He was supposed to be gallant and heroic and rebellious. His names each represented something different and he could not choose which one to be. 

    He might just be Albus. He might have to make a name for himself after all. But maybe he couldn’t, because the qualities he wanted were already attributed to a different name. 

    Remembering Albus’s refusal to believe that Slytherin was now good, Hugo said, “Then you’ll just have to make it, if you don’t believe it, mate.”

    Al barely took notice of that.

    “Albus, I have two questions for you to think about,” said Rose, looking him in the eye. “One; why does it matter so much now? We were Sorted six years ago. And two, why does the Fat Lady keep letting you in here? If you’re a Slytherin? Because you belong in both: you’re the better side of Slytherin and the better of Gryffindor. That will never change.”

    Albus did think about that. “To the first one, I say, it’s because of Malfoy. And to the second, I’m like the broken mirror James passed down to me. I’m not as important as the whole one that Dad has. I’m just a broken mirror and so I’m not as much of a danger; part of me is missing. The Fat Lady doesn’t care because I’m not really that much of a threat. Goodnight.” 

    And he clambered out of the portrait hole, shrugging on the old Cloak. He became as invisible as he was in shadow of his parents as he stomped down to the eerie dungeons, which he despised with a loathing that he was convinced was not even legal. And he pulled the mirror fragment out of his pocket. He lit his wand under the Cloak and stared at his reflection. Once he disappeared into his slumbering dormitory, he whispered, “Sirius.” 


	2. Beloved Lily

                                         

**Chapter 2  
** **Beloved Lily**

                “Dad, answer already,” muttered Albus. He didn’t care if it was midnight, he didn’t _care_ what he and Mum were up to (and didn’t really want to know, either). He didn’t want a, “Not tonight.” Albus was too jostled to care about anything that would have usually wrested out his heart to know he was the agitator. Tonight, he was in torment and just wanted reassurance. 

                “Use this mirror,” Dad had said to James when Albus was ten. “Believe me, if you need to talk to me, ever, just say ‘Sirius,’ and I’ll be with you. Understand?”

                “Why?” and the ever-curious James had grinned uncontrollably. 

                “Because once, it cost a life when I didn’t use it. A life that was very, very dear to my heart. If you ever have an emergency and no way to reach me, use this. This is vital, James. This is a tool, not a plaything. You must responsibly handle it, because you may need it to save a life as I once failed to do. Got that?”

                James had nodded, and, even though he was not the intended receiver of the speech, Albus did, too. There was something so heartbrokenly serious on his face that Al had his heartstrings stretched beyond repair. 

                “Dad, where are you?” Albus was staring into his family’s kitchen. “Dad!” his hushed words rose to a crescendo until he was almost shouting. He couldn’t control it, he felt like he imagined James must have at times: desperate beyond sanity for answers. 

                Finally, from within the twisted depth of the house behind the fragment, there could be heard a clamber and a bang. A curse was heard, and then his father appeared: bright green eyes, black hair which his mother fondly ruffled as she acknowledged that it knew no master, and rubbing his eyes, glasses in hand. Harry looked around dazedly. He reached up and rumpled his hair in a flummoxed movement. His eyes roved the room, blurred with sleep. After a diminutive, “Dad,” Harry finally looked up and gave a little jolt, glasses flying to his face. He ran to pick up the rectangular and magicked mirror. 

                “Albus, how on earth—I mean, no, what—why—” began Al’s dad. 

                At that point, Ginny, wearing a silken tank top with half the fabric of something average, and can-those-be-shorts?-pants, so short they barely existed. Albus’s mother, still beautiful and desirable, albeit her age, didn’t look like a mother for the first time in Albus’s lifetime. 

                “What’s going on?” she inquired crossly, rubbing and rolling her neck. 

                “Uh—dear,” began Dad, eyeing Ginny’s cleavage. 

                Ginny’s deep brown eyes met his, and then traveled to Albus’s. 

                She gave a little squeak. “Oh, God!” she yelled, and raced into Al’s parents’ bedroom. She emerged moments later donned in a silky robe, her cheeks a fiery red. “I’m so sorry you had to see that,” she panted. 

                Albus half-was, half-wasn’t sorry. 

                “So, anyway,” blushed Mum, “what’s going on? Something wrong?” In moments, Ginny switched from hot wife to concerned mother. 

                “I want to talk to you both,” Albus stated slowly, as though it was going to calm his racing heart, “about Snape.”

                Ginny’s eyes widened, though with sympathy or loathing, Albus couldn’t tell; Harry just sighed, staring at a point on the distance that only eyes which had witnessed legitimate terror such as his could ever focus on without snapping. 

                “What do you want to know, Al?” he asked, though he obviously already knew. For years, that very qualm had etched worry lines into Albus’s forehead. Deeper and deeper the pencil worked until it was impossible to search out the start, nor to start to work them off. 

                “Dad, I have to know. What—what happened with him? Was he really…a Death Eater?” Albus’s voice shot up through two octaves, as though his intoxicating fear had been gripped and played with for spite by his vocal chords. 

                Dad groaned, a long, full groan, full of dreary anticipation for the conversation to ensue, sooner or later. 

                “And,” this last wish, which had engulfed Albus’s every train of thought since his mind had been able to comprehend the looks of passerby directed to his father, ensnared him in its deadly trap, “I want to know about _you_.” Al said this in a whisper, as though the wind might be listening and punish him for this curiosity. 

                “Albus, we’ve been _over_ this and over this! James wasn’t allowed to know until he graduated, he just couldn’t be trusted. I’m sorry, but Lily will have to do the same, and so will you.”

                “So you don’t trust me?” Albus aimed each perfectly thrown dagger in such a way that the bending of his words would puncture that which held the most vulnerable of heartstrings. “Is that it? Or is it because I’m a lousy Slytherin? You told me it would bend to my wishes, and I was such a fool I believed you. Well, no more! If you can’t tell me, I don’t see why I’ve any reason to be here, talking to you.”

                “Al—wait,” and Mum’s voice was soothing, worried, horrified. 

                “By, Mum,” he said, pointedly ignoring his father. 

                With a spoken counter word, the image disappeared, and so too went Albus’s fanciful wishes that his father might bend to his wishes and whims and might allow him to know that which he so yearned to find out. 

    Albus once more left his dormitory. He didn’t know where he was aiming to go, but he had to get out of the sniveling Slytherin Common Room. 

    It all felt as though he had been ensnared. Such was the doing of a massive beast, bigger than the Giant Squid, which could still be witnessed in the lake on the Hogwarts’ ground. He was being spun as a jest by some monumental being, he just knew it. For how could he still be alive after all this torment, if the purpose was not entertainment? To make him write and scream enough that a brute might find convoluted humor?

    It was no surprise that he ended up in front of the stone gargoyles. 

    His father often told him about being in that very office, talking to the man for whom Albus had been christened. 

    He stood there for quite some time, uncovered yet unseen. There were certain perks of being Head Boy; this was one of them. He roamed the corridors at all hours, unaware of whomever or whatever drifted around him; even Peeves, the Poltergeist, had no reason to yell “Student in the corridors!” He was no longer unauthorized. 

    “Mr. Potter!”

    The call seemed to be from a different planet entirely. Albus was in his own place, where other people did not exist. He could simply float in midair, quite oblivious to everything else, and wallow in his present misery. 

    “Professor McGonagall! I—didn’t expect you to be up—”

    “I might say the same thing to you, Potter,” she said, her weathered, tired, and sharp face kindly. Her graying hair was tied as ever behind her head in a stately bun. “What has you up at this late hour?”

    “Just thinking,” said Albus. “That’s all. I’m sorry to disturb you at your office, I’ll just go—”

    “Nonsense!” and her face broke into a beam. “You know you’re always welcome—you and James and Lily and everyone else in this school, for that matter. Is there anything you care to talk about?”

    Albus looked at the aging woman. He studied every line, every beautiful line etched in her face. “That would be great, Professor.”

    Professor Mcgonnagal told the gargoyle, "Acid Pops," and it leaped aside. Albus followed her up the winding escalator-like staircase, which spiraled them into the Headmistress's office.

    “What brings you about so latter, Potter?” asked McGonagall. She snapped her fingers and a cheery house-elf appeared at her elbow. With a flick of her wand, a self-propelling spoon added a couple lumps of sugar and cream into each of the two cups of tea. One of them was placed precariously in Albus’s hand. 

    He pondered the tea with a spoon that handed itself to him. His eyes fixed on the gilded frame of his namesake. It hung behind Professor McGonagall’s head, head lolling on shoulder. The room was rather soporific. Every portrait of each dead headmaster or headmistress in all of Hogwarts’ history. Albus scowled at the painting of Phineas Nilligus: His aunt Hermione and Uncle Ron had a portrait of him in their home. He visited every so often, and seemed to nurse a rather unhealthy loathing for Albus. It was as though he had done something to personally offend the portrait. 

    “A lot of things, really,” muttered Albus to McGonagall. 

    “Would you be so kind as to explain?” and her glasses slipped down her nose, lips in a thin line. 

    Albus distractedly chased the room with his eyes. He imagined his roving eyes to be able to etch indents into the walls of the room, shooting flames that would inadvertently destroy all in their agitated path. 

    He looked at the bookcases, the instruments that were supposed to have been Albus Dumbledore; a slumbering cat whose eyes were covering up the carefree world of dreaming. Finally, he could bring himself to face his Headmistress’s eyes which he could feel even when he couldn’t see them. 

    “It’s this whole thing with my dad,” and he proceeded with vigilance. “And with Snape, and Slytherin, and I’m so confused. I think it was Malfoy. He told me—I don’t know what it meant—he told me that Snape was a Death Eater, and that he was the reason that my grandparents were killed. He—he also told me that Dad did more than just put of a fight with Voldemort. I’ve always known there was something to with him, but…my dad’s scar, did he really have a connection with him? Did he really kill him?” every word was like Albus’s trepidation come out to finally drift around him. Somehow it was worse than having the fears racing around his head. This way, they danced in the air, taunting him. He might endure the mental agony, but once he had revealed these to be true, it was as though he would suffocate from the pressure of his terror circling his head. 

    McGonagall sipped her tea, pending Albus’s speech. Finally, she opened her to mouth to speak, and Albus hung on her every word. “I can’t decide who was braver, your father or Severus Snape.”

   “My dad said that Snape and Dumbledore were the bravest men he ever knew,” and the memory of his departure to Hogwarts came back to haunt him: the last time he could ever have a complete trust in his father.

    “Interesting. Look, Potter,” and McGonagall peered over the top of her spectacles, “I can tell you right now I agree with your father’s wishes. He had such courage, but he took on too much, too young. He lost too much, as well. His parents, Sirius, the list goes on…

    “And I know he wouldn’t want you repeating his past.” She sighed. “But Snape…I can see that’s bothering you most. Snape was a Death Eater. He had been, until just before your grandmother died.”

    Albus’s breath hitched in his throat and Professor McGonagall nodded solemnly. “He was in love with your grandmother from a very early age. They were friends since childhood—Snape was an observant boy, I can imagine. He was the reason your Muggle-born grandmother knew she was going to Hogwarts before she got her letter. 

    “After Lily, your grandmother started dating your grandfather, Snape parted from her. I’m told he had called her ‘Mudblood.’ That was the end of their friendship. However, Snape remained in love with her, even after she married James and gave birth to your father. 

    “You might have guessed: Severus joined the Death Eaters. He was one of Voldemort’s favorites.”

    Seeing the comment on Albus’s tongue before it took flight, she shook her head. “I know it was wrong, and so did Severus. 

    “He knew Voldemort was planning to kill your dad and your grandparents. Severus begged him to spare your grandmother. 

    “However, when she resisted him, Voldemort, who could feel no love, did not understand Severus’s wish that she stay alive. He killed her, and her sacrifice protected your father from Voldemort’s Killing Curse. 

   “It was then that Severus, in pain from losing your grandmother, begged Professor Dumbledore to forgive him and let him teach at Hogwarts. He swore to be loyal to the Order of the Phoenix, a secret society set on destroying Lord Voldemort.”

   “Dumbledore’s greatest secret was love,” murmured Albus, transfixed. 

    McGonagall’s eyes pierced his own. “Precisely,” she said, nodding. “Snape’s love of your grandmother persuaded him. Snape was more courageous than I can imagine. He fooled Voldemort into thinking that he was really a Death Eater, and just teaching at Hogwarts to spy on Dumbledore. In this way, he managed to double-cross Voldemort. This was no easy task. At Voldemort’s return, and during his triumph and more recent rise to power, Snape carried on after Dumbledore died. He risked his life to help your father, Albus, and he has not regretted it. He died a loyal servant of Dumbledore, and his last words were to help your father.”

    “But,” and the darkest secret of all, that had been eating away at Albus, bubbled on his tongue, “didn’t Snape kill Dumbledore?” it was barely a whisper, which made the words sound ever more awful rebounding on the glorious office. 

    “Dumbledore very carefully planned his death to save an innocent soul. He was already dying. Severus never truly defeated Dumbledore. Dumbledore’s fate was set; he was to die, it was just a matter of when, Albus. Snape was never guilty of murder. It was a performance.” Her kind eyes flashed with sympathy. “There are things that Voldemort never understood, and this was the greatest fault that led to his downfall. He spent his life running away from death, never loving, just pushing others down in order to reach his greatest wish: immortality.

    Albus raised agonized eyes to meet McGonall’s. The last, most awful of the questions could take no more delay to be answered. “Please, Professor, just—just tell me. Did my dad kill Voldemort?”

    Her eyes were just as agonized as Albus’s. “Voldemort did awful things to himself to run away from death, Albus. He had set his death in stone by never realizing how extraordinarily brave your father is. He might be the most impossible person to kill there is. It is too dark and too dangerous for you to know about yet, you will understand when you know.”

     “Please, can’t you just tell me whether or not he did? He has to tell me the rest.”

     She sighed, and it was old as life itself. 

    “Yes, Potter.” She glanced down, looking more tired and older and more defeated than Albus had ever seen her. “Yes, your father killed Lord Voldemort.” 


End file.
